A Noteworthy Anniversary at the NY Times
Now that neo-con Field Marshall William von Kristol's hideous New York Times column has persisted a week past its first anniversary, I've decided to stop reading the whole op-ed page. It isn't Kristol alone who has profaned that bare, ruined choir of punditry, most of which already deserved him the day he arrived. Even the estimable Paul Krugman, the intrepid Nicholas Kristoff, the impassioned Frank Rich, and Gail "Hah-hah" Collins can't keep the page a "must read" or vital civic reference point. For technological as well as moral reasons, its time has come and gone.
Its problem certainly wasn't that Kristol is conservative. The page needed a smart, honorable conservative or two to keep its liberals honest. But it offered the nutrition-less if beguiling David Brooks, that pop-sociological sophist and sometime neo-conservative savant whose intellectual usury I've pinned and whose evolution I predicted last fall, and the tactical maunderings of Kristol, whose phony populist banter has lived down to its full promise since he began.
The Times op-ed page's failure to stimulate real political discussion reflects deeper agonies of American Newspaper Hell, especially conglomerate publishers' visionless and technological bottom-lining, which is extinguishing newspapers as centers of civic dialogue.
This agony has been anticipated and chronicled brilliantly since the start of the decade by New York University's Jay Rosen, in What Are Journalists For? and in his excellent posts about newspapers and blogs.
Read the scintillating, delicious commentary in any good French, German, or even British daily newspaper, or in Israel's Haaretz, to see what's missing in America. The writers' blend of intelligence, passion, grounded reportage, and elegance make their columns uplifting as well as entertaining. That earns them the space they need in order to do more than crack a faux-folksy joke, pirouette twice, and disappear.
But most of the drones who edit American op-ed pages are afraid of their own shadows thanks to the dumb-it-down pressures of conglomerate bottom-lining and to consumers' market-and-technology driven civic mindlessness. As they've tried to catch up with readers fleeing newspapers and a citizenship more demanding and rewarding than shopping, American newspaper editors and writers have wound up like deer in the headlights of the internet's instantaneous, interactive, and linkable commentary and response, commentary and response.
They don't ask whether a newspaper's more "primitive" technology might give it a different, no-less crucial role in "making public life go well," as Jay Rosen puts it. Instead of publishing columns good enough to survive the 36 hours between final composition and letters to the editor, conglomerate bottom liners publish more one-liners. They haven't the courage or wherewithal to cultivate the literary graces and contextual wisdom that make European feuilletons irresistible to readers who take citizenship and civilization seriously.
I don't know how even the Times can escape its consumerist trap, especially in competition with Rupert Murdoch's omnivorous News Corporation. But I do know this: As American newspapers die from technological and demographic sea-changes they didn't cause, their editors are reacting in ways that make those newspapers deserve the deaths they are dying.
Their efforts to become nimble free-marketeers who triangulate their content between advertisers and consumers with a few politically correct (and niche-marketed) grace notes have left them settling for the likes of Brooks and Kristol, "conservatives" who help American liberals to shop for ideas and wars but not to think like keepers of a republic.
"The page needed a smart, honorable conservative or two to keep its liberals honest"
From your point of view, a smart, honorable conservative would be not be a conservative , he would be a liberal.
January 12, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nope, he or she would be a trustworthy Burkean or a smart libertarian, not someone who tries to blame liberals for conservatives' own inability to reconcile their yearning for ordered liberty, on the one hand, and their obeisance, on the other, to every whim and riptide of the global capitalism that is destroying everything conservatives (and many others) cherish.
January 12, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Any example?
January 12, 2009 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Help us out here. Who are your examples?
January 12, 2009 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Any example?" How about Bob Somerby ?
January 12, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because you smart honest liberals certainly never blame consevatives for your "short comings"...give me a break!
January 12, 2009 10:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
SFC,
stop whining and address the issue.
January 12, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know. I think Frank Rich and Paul Krugman are both pretty darn good.
January 12, 2009 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
They are good because you agree with them. Is there anybody who is pretty darn good and you disagree with him most of the times?
January 12, 2009 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I disagree with George Will mostly all the time, and I think he's a pompous ass, but I do read his columns. I also read Kathleen Parker, and even manage to get through about half of a given Charles Krauthammer's column, the same with Cal Thomas.
I read David Broder too but I put him in the same catagory as George Will, a pompous ass.
January 12, 2009 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brooks is a pretty trustworthy Burkean. Kristol can be a little bit mean spirited at times, but he's no worse than Krugman and certainly not as absurdist as Herbert.
Herbert is hilarious. There is no social problem, world event, news story, or personal anecdote that he is unable to relate to the extended and undeserved suffering of People Who Share an Ethnic, Social, or Racial Classification With Bob Herbert.
Still, newspapers and their editorial pages are basically a thing of the past (they are the proverbial trade in buggy whips). Publishing cost is near the zero bound (and cost of reading as well) on the internet, so it's hard to justify the existence of print media.
January 12, 2009 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you really sure he only extends his compassion to those who
?FWIW you subvert your message with hilarious. You probably don't really mean that. I hope so.
January 12, 2009 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Hilarious" was chosen intentionally. Herbert's well nursed sense of moral outrage, let loose at absolutely -anything- (and exactly twice a week), crosses the line into the ridiculous.
It's like dadaism. Sure, it may not be art. But it's sometimes funny in spite of itself.
January 13, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. In that case we disagree.
Obviously not because I'm right and you're wrong.We each have our personal preference for how we'd like the world to work. They differ and neither of us can convince the other becuase, as we were taught in our high school logic class, "You can't argue first principles".
I'd like to see the economy run so it raises the standard of living of the bottom 20%. Those are the folks Bob Herbert writes about and I'm glad he does.
No reason you should agree.
AOBTW I understand that the downside of my preferred economic policies is lower overall growth. And accept that.
I'm sure you don't.
January 13, 2009 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, what? Bono doesn't float your boat?
Were there any stretches when you thought the Op-Ed page of the Times rocked the boat?
Did you read Paul Mulshine (a conservative columnist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger) about the death of newspapers he wrote for the Wall St Journal? I think he correctly pointed out that if newspapers die, including the Times, it will be because they lost classified ads to the internet.
January 12, 2009 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The Times op-ed page's failure to stimulate real political discussion reflects deeper agonies of American Newspaper Hell, especially conglomerate publishers' visionless and technological bottom-lining, which is extinguishing newspapers as centers of civic dialogue."
You're kidding right? You're not seriously lamenting the malignancy of the corporate media and what it has done to the once honorable profession of new reporting and opining? Are you?
Sorry for the snark (not too sorry though). I hate to tell ya but it's only journalists and those who love them that are in any agony at all about the corporatization of new organizations and their rancid homogenization and dumbing down of news and op eds. So they are trash? So they go under? So what? It's no real loss to anybody as there really is nothing there to lose. The corporate sociopaths will just move to another field where, like a swarm of locusts, they will leave the landscape barron when they are done feeding and move on to the next host.
I honestly think that in a sense "journalists" need to grow up and realize their appallingly romantic view of their "mission" has always been something of a joke in that their mission was always a distant second, third, or fourth to the real mission of "news organizations" which has always been to make money for their owners. It's almost as bad as listening to a bunch of academics whining about how hard they work and how "the academy" just isn't what it used to be, etc...
Obviously the media is important to the republic, but the big dailies and the rest of the corporate news organizations have long since stopped being much of a positive influence in the republic anyway. It isn't like what we've lost got lost yesterday. They've been serving up crap since the end of Watergate and with the exception of that and a couple of other high profile exceptions they were pretty shitty in terms of guiding civic discussion and providnig a diversity of viewpoints overall for decades.
Unless and until "journalists" stop working for, for-profit businesses that use their work solely to attract advertising and subscriptions they really don't have much to lament. Journalists (at the bigger daily organizations at least) are also going to have to give up their previously almost guaranteed fat salaries (in comparison to average workers) and cushy, lifelong jobs in the bargain once they have found their niche. That day is over quite plainly. Perhaps when most journalists no longer suckle at the teet of corporations, we'll start seeing more actual journalism in the media and less stenography of the official line the powerful want conveyed?
January 12, 2009 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Unless and until "journalists" stop working for, for-profit businesses that use their work solely to attract advertising and subscriptions they really don't have much to lament."
Well, in that case, it seems like what we'll certainly be left with are "journalists" who have trust funds to support them. In terms of who manages to wrangle a major column, I think it's that way already.
Although I frequently find the comments to articles more interesting than the articles and it has its own interesting qualities, I don't fully buy the "citizen journalist"/ yakker on the web model as any kind of replacement, either.
Nor is doing paid jouralism through "non-profit" organizations any better. It may, in fact, be worse. How much independence do you have when you're effectively relying on charity? (How effective are our congress critters?)
No, I'm inclined to think that the problem with US columnists is editorial failure. It's not just that they're not "not allowed" to be provocative, it's that they're not delivering very much even if they're trying to be provocative. Demanding and working for quality is an editorial function. That means it can be fixed.
OTOH, the failure(s) in our public political imagination is a more entrenched problem. Editors and columnists aren't immune to that. (Or, maybe the trust fund really does make you dumb like Bush and impervious to editorial suggestion).
January 12, 2009 7:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It's not just that they're not "not allowed" to be provocative, it's that they're not delivering very much even if they're trying to be provocative. "
On this we are certainly in full agreement.
January 12, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
oleeb,
I read an interesting article on the International Herald Tribune website today (I guess the NY Times carried it as well) which was about the expansion of Al-Jazeera, which as I'm sure you know, is funded by the Qatari emirate. The article said:
"And unlike purely commercial broadcasters, Al Jazeera does not have to accompany its new-media strategies with revised new-media business models.
"'Part of our mission, our mandate, is to get our news out," said Mohamed Nanabhay, a 29-year-old Al Jazeera executive who established the company's new-media group in 2006. "We don't have the direct commercial pressures that others have. If we can make some money that is great.'"
Ihttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/1579929.stm
It's interesting to ponder, I think, the quality of the journalism of the government-funded BBC. Criticisms can be made, but I think the experiment (like the experiment of American public broadcasting) suggests that the factors governing how the sausage gets ground don't have to do with where the money to do it is coming from.
I think it's a more fundamental problem with education, and teaching fearlessness.
January 12, 2009 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are no independent conservatives who can present their views without dishonestly presenting the "Liberal" view. They have either been purged or are on their way to being purged from the Republican party.
Let me give you all a clue... Liberals are Democrats, but not all Democrats are Liberals. It used to be that Conservatives were Republicans and not all Republicans are Conservatives... that is no longer the case. The Conservatives have taken over the Republican party and pushed out all Republicans who aren't conservatives.
We thank they for 2006 and 2008. Keep up the good work!
January 12, 2009 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be perfectly accurate if anyone had any idea what "Conservatism" was after eight years of a "Conservative" President who is unabashedly interventionist overseas, passes the most complicated and costly expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson, and thinks tax cuts are only for the well to do.
I don't think any of the "Republicans" who voted for any of the above deserve the name.
January 12, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that newspapers shouldn't try to become the Internet. I think the New York Times attempts to be sort of upscale trendy but there it is. One can't be upscale trendy and get trends from the New York Times. Newspapers should do in depth factual reportage, that is provide what the blogs don't do, TPM excepted. Papers have to report stories that can be built upon. Newspapers have to find a empty niche and the eye-catching blurb niche is already filled. Articles that suggest this and suggest that and then the newpaper moves on to the next suggestion aren't worth the trouble of reading in the first place. Would this be a financially viable strategy? Maybe not but the strategy of becoming like the Internet is definitely not working. Newspapers have to become what newspapers were suppose to be all the time.
January 12, 2009 6:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's be honest here: Kristol is not and has never been not an honest journalist; he is a Republican political operative.
The Achilles Heel of journalism long has been national "journalists" utter lack of practical knowledge or real-world experience in the subject matter about which they write as erstwhile "authorities."
Kristol, an intelligent man, spent his entire career in academia and as a political operative. He has absolutely zero life experience or hands-on knowledge of topics like combat operations (apart from what he reads), and therefore has no business evaluating the best Iraq military strategy from any prominent, serious media outlet.
Yet he was a ubiquitous presence in national editorials and TV interviews about the risk of invading Iraq and prudence of implementing the Surge.
Paul Krugman, by contrast, is an experienced and accomplished economist. He knows what he's talking about on economics because --unlike pure sophists such as David Brooks-- he can "do the proverbial math" and do it as well as anyone.
Krugman is an expert, hands-on economist first and foremost, who also writes opinions for the Times. Kristol is a partisan opinion-writer first and foremost, with no substantive hands-on expertise in any subject about which he professes to be expert.
It seems that a confident and entertaining schtick (=cough= Maureen Dowd =cough=) a Lexis-Nexis account and proper connections are the primary qualifications to be an editorial "journalist" these days.
As for conservatives, I think the incredibly prescient Kevin Phillips should be given Kristol's slot --if he'd take it.
January 12, 2009 8:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Today broke new ground at the NY Times. At the BOTTOM of the FRONT PAGE appeared an ad! Oh, yes, across the whole bottom of the page.
That, to me, signaled a terrible decline!
Forgive my intrusion on the subject of the op-ed page, but it seemed to me that this ad at the bottom of the front page was an op-ed in itself!
You can now buy your way to the front page of the New York Times!
January 12, 2009 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that Zed is right: "Newspapers have to become what newspapers were supposed to be all the time," and that Oleeb is right to say that we (especially I!) shouldn't romanticize what they were.
I worked at New York Newsday and the New York Daily News for a total of seven years. My second cousin James Wechsler was editor of The New York Post during its pre-Murdoch liberal glory days -- but, yes, it's easy, and wrong, to romanticize those days. On the other hand, in those days, especially during the 1950s, other media besides radio were scarce, and newspaper-reading habits persisted into the 1970s; so their clout was extraordinary, and this did mean that the best papers attracted some very talented editors and writers. Now they attract people with the minds of "clerks of fact," as Pete Hamill, a veteran newsman himself, charged long ago.
My post was really about newspaper commentary, not straight news reportage, a separate subject in itself, as are the hopeful prospects of collaborative citizen reporting on the internet, as pioneered by TPM.
In what I did write about -- the opinion pages -- I should have added that the closest thing the Times has to a spirited feuilleton on the European type is Frank Rich's long Sunday columns, but that's another story, too. Suffice it to say that I have my criticisms as well as my kudos.
There is much more to say on this subject, but obviously I indulged myself with a short blast prompted by the incredible continuing presence of William Kristol on the Times op ed page. This is just one of those things that publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and his editorial-page editor (and Kristol's one-time Collegiate School fellow student) Andy Rosenthal will be living down for a long time.
Let me close with this link to the kind of column you wouldn't see in the Times, except occasionally when Rich or Bob Herbert outdo themselves: Read what Gideon Levy is saying in Haaretz, one of Israel's premiere dailies, about the current war in Gaza:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1054578.html
January 12, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim -- with regards to commentary, let me underscore my previous point that today's national editorialists are embarrassingly short of practical experience or true expertise in the topics they write about, and that's partly why readers find them unengaging.
In the Web 2.0 age, opinions, gossip, clever insults and even (especially?) scoops abound. Why, then, would a pre-eminent newspaper hire William Kristol?
Bill Safire was a knowledgeable, first-rate wordsmith who worked in private sector PR & television and as an Army correspondent before getting his Times column. Rowland Evans served in combat in the Marine Corps before journalism. Krugman, as I noted, is an accomplished economist.
It's understandable why the Times would hire them and why their opinions would be interesting to readers.
But Kristol --like so many of today's editorialists-- is neither uniquely experienced, knowledgeable or able to bring new insight to readers through his writing. And people won't pay to read uninteresting opinions when there are so many alternatives.
January 13, 2009 2:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I always had the feeling that the NYT knew exactly what they were getting in Kristol. And by not even living up to the lowest of expectations, Bill actually did what he was supposed to do.
So perhaps the Times views the Kristol column anniversary, as a success?
January 13, 2009 3:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't argue first principles. Best wishes.
January 13, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Kristol Junior brings nothing to the table, and makes it look like nothing is needed.
I can't believe it's been a year. I've done pretty well in not reading many of his columns.
Quit knocking Maureen Dowd. It's not her fault she's beautiful.
Bill Safire thinks it's fine that Nixon tapped his phone and called him a jewboy behind his back. Pathetic.
But in good news, Pat Buchanan, who is actually dangerous, can't live forever.
(And who did Bay Buchanan's extreme make-over? Dick Clark's plastic surgeon?)
January 14, 2009 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink